Pub Bench – A Poem

The inspiration for this simple poem came not just from this John Frederick Peto painting, but from a photo I took a while ago (see below).

It’s a warm night. I’m on holiday. I’m inside a city pub having a drink before dinner. The windows are concertinaed back, so there’s nothing between the interior of the pub and the exterior of the street but those burgundy-coloured iron railings. The air is fresh, as opposed to how close it may have been in the painting above. Here, the book is a phone, the biscuits are coasters. And the mug of beer has been joined by a prosecco.

Pub Bench

Ledger, tankard of ale, lit pipe –
more than a hundred years ago
you retreated here, drinking.
1893 crisis. Drinkers talked of
the bank’s collapse. Your despair.

The barman gives the bench a wipe,
green neon beyond the window
its great wooden shutters opening
on passersby, your bank, storeys above.
I sit, perhaps in your very chair.

More than a hundred years. The type
of customers changed. Prosecco
poised, a descendant sits musing,
worlds of books on my phone, olive
crusted fish ordered, when I swear

I feel another breeze, a slight
glitch in the ceiling fans. The glow
inside this converted bank building
dims. Your ghost whispers to me. Love
it says, reserves. Minimise risk. Prepare.

©elsp 2026

More of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on the rimas dissolutas here. If you like this form, I have another here.